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Excitement greets start of direct flights

A group of Aboriginal performers welcome the first group of Chinese tourists to arrive on a direct charter flight at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday. PHOTO: CHU PEI-HSIUNG, TAIPEI TIMES

Excitement and chaos marked the inauguration of weekend charter flights yesterday as dozens of charter flights landed and departed at airports around the country.

The first charter flight leaving from Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport was a China Airlines flight to Shanghai, which departed at 7:30am, while the first flight departing from Taipei Songshan Airport was Uni Air’s flight to Shanghai, which left at 8am.

Meanwhile, a China Southern Airlines plane with more than 100 Chinese tourists among the 258 passengers aboard landed at the Taoyuan airport at 8:05am, making it the first weekend cross-strait charter flight to arrive from China.

The first one to land at Songshan was a Xiamen Air flight, which touched down at 8:30am after an 80-minute trip from Xiamen City in Fujian Province. The flight carried the first group of Chinese tourists arriving at Songshan Airport.

At both airports, two arrays of fire engines used their tenders to form a “whitewater tunnel” to welcome the inaugural flights as they taxied along the runways.

Taiwanese airlines had all prepared inauguration ceremonies to greet passengers boarding the inaugural flights. They were welcomed not only by dancing lions and Aboriginal performances, but also by throngs of local and international media.

Government officials, airlines’ ground staff, travel agents, performers, reporters and photographers turned Songshan Airport into a chaotic site.

Shao Qiwei (邵琪偉), director of the China National Tourism Administration, was among the first batch of Chinese tourists to take the maiden weekend charter flight to Taiwan yesterday. Shao, who is visiting Taiwan in his capacity as president of the Beijing-based Cross-Strait Tourism Exchange Association, was mobbed by reporters when he appeared in the crowded airport lobby.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Master Hsing Yun (星雲法師) were also invited to attend the ceremony hosted by China Eastern Airlines for its first flight between Nanjing and Songshan. Nanjing became one of the Chinese airports offering cross-strait charter flights after Wu’s visit to China in May.

Wu said he hoped that the weekend charter flight service could gradually evolve into regular charter flights.

Ho Huei-ping (何惠萍) was waiting to board Uni Air’s flight at Songshan Airport when she spoke with the Taipei Times. She and her daughter were going to visit her husband, who has been working in Shanghai for about two years.

“It used to take him almost a day to come home,” she said. “The previous time he left Shanghai at 5am, but was stranded in Hong Kong for hours because of rain and he did not arrive [in Taiwan] until 11pm. Now it only takes only about three hours.”

Wang Chi (王崎), a Chinese tourist who took the Xiamen Air flight, has transited flights via Taiwan several times in the past.

“We just want to see some of the natural scenery in Taiwan,” he said, adding that Taiwan was a must-see place for Chinese tourists.

A real estate agent based in Xiamen, Wang said he had been watching Taiwanese cable TV news regularly and probably understood Taiwanese politics better than some Taiwanese did.

Jokin Laspiur Lopez, a manager of Mondragon Corp, is from Spain and works in the company’s office in Shanghai. Having spent a week in Taiwan on a business trip, Lopez booked a flight with Shanghai Airlines that took off from Songshan at 1pm.

Though he was aware that tickets for the cross-strait charter flight cost more than those for flights to China via Hong Kong or Macau, Lopez said the service has reduced the travel time between Shanghai and Taipei from about seven hours to two hours and 45 minutes.

“And to me, time is money,” he said.

The lobby area at Songshan Airport was crowded, as check-in counters were combined to accept both domestic and international passengers.

Customs officials said they did not open any of the charter flight passengers’ luggage, because the customs bureau did not want to incur bad luck for the inaugural Chinese tourist group.

However, they stressed that all luggage had undergone X-ray inspections.

Commenting on the first day of the weekend charter flight service, Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said later yesterday that, on average, a passenger can leave Taoyuan’s second terminal within 20 minutes.

Some took longer than 40 minutes yesterday as a number waited for their team leaders, who were asked to attend the celebration ceremonies, while others were exchanging their money before leaving the terminal.

“The chaos outside the terminal was caused by passionate media who wanted to speak to the tourists,” he said.

At a separate setting yesterday, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said that there was no need to go out of the way to please Chinese tourists and that acting naturally would be the best way to greet them.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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